But the iPad was replaced by the iPad 2. It's one thing when a company stops support on an older product/service and replaces it with a new product/service that does everything and more, giving you the opportunity to upgrade and continue doing the same things with the same friends... but it's completely different when they just stop a product/service you still want to use without giving a similar alternative.
Sega stopped because they didn't have the money to continue, which is completely different.
Wait... where did they go? Did some mass fire destroy all remaining copies in the world? No. They're still there. I can still have my kids, born after they came out, play those games. I can - and do - have my kids play games from 30 years ago, from when I started gaming. Even the games that actually were lost to me due to fire or whatever ravages of time. Games do not suddenly cease to exist a few years after they are released. The good games are still played 15 years later, 30 years later, and I'm assuming 60 years later, 100 years later. Like classic books, the good ones will survive, they won't go anywhere. The games that only have nostalgia going for them will be lost once the people with that nostalgia stop lamenting or die out.
By the time the servers of today's games are shut off, someone will have hacked/cracked them and made them playable without those servers. Games needing activation or some kind of server has been around for years now, many games have had their servers shut off. But I can't think of a single game that I still want to play, but that I absolutely can not play.
1. IMO if you are bored, you are already past the point of creativity, are subconsciously refusing to be creative due to depression, or are being prevented from doing what you want to do. Boredom is unpleasant, and we naturally avoid unpleasantness when we can, rather than waiting for it to happen and fixing things afterwards. For example, if a jar of pickles slips off the counter, and we see it is headed for our toe, we will instinctively try to move out of the way so that our toe does not get hit, rather than just letting our toe get hit because it is easy to bandage up a broken toe. It has been shown, however, that depressed people are less likely to move out of the way. So I think that if possible we will avoid boredom, and lack of avoiding it shows either an inability to avoid it (we tried to jump out of the way, but the jar still hit our toe) or that something is wrong (we did not instinctually try to avoid the jar, showing that there is some problem).
2. I do not agree at all that creativity comes from boredom. Boredom is a relatively new thing. Not too long ago, we didn't have time to be bored; we'd be working on the farm all day, or at the factory all day, or keeping the household running (think about how much time/energy it took to do things that are mundane now, such as doing a load of laundry, before modern conveniences). Even in the times when people had servants to do the grunt work, they still had a packed day. Back then, having time where you had nothing to do yet had enough energy to do anything but sleep was a luxury, it was cherished. Yet, people were still creative. This can be seen in not only museums, but in vintage quilting, needle arts, furniture, etc. Sure there were a few people that now have their stuff seen as creative art, that did it for a living, and so were doing it instead of working on a farm or at a factory, but the majority of stuff that was kept as art was carefully kept in good/usable condition because it was art from the beginning.
Though people were busy with something the majority of the time, they still got inspired and took time out to do something with that inspiration (or kept it in their head if they could never manage to make time). In the past they were busy with work or etc.... today they are busy with mobile devices. And in fact, today we (in first world countries) are mostly doing work that leaves us with time and energy to do something with that creativity. And we can put them on the internet for all the world to see. Even a brief look around the internet will show that, despite all the mobile devices, we still have plenty of creativity.
One thing of note though is that many modern-day parents force their kids into being bored. They are holding their foot in place as the pickle jar plummets toward it. 2 generations ago, maybe even 1 for some of us, kids played outside, without adults. They did not have schedules full of organized activities. If they felt that boredom was about to sink in, they would do something. If they told their parents they were bored, their parents either sent them outside or gave them an extra chore. But now parents are afraid of letting their kids outside without an adult; and many adults do not have the time and/or the desire to take their kids outside. When they do take their kid outside, it is in an organized and/or supervised activity. Or, kids have a packed schedule of school, after school care, homework, and organized activities, leaving them no time to go outside and just play. Kids desire down time, they desire unorganized, unsupervised play time, though they often don't realize it, because this is crucial to development. When kids aren't allowed or don't have time to get that time, of course they will seek it out in places they ARE allowed to go; on mobile devices, on game consoles, on the internet; because parents feel that is safe because the kid is near them or at least inside, because those don't take extra time (i.e. they can be done while the parent drives or grocery shops)
I totally disagree. That's just efficentness. If I tell my husband to stop and pick up cream of chicken soup on his way home so that I can finish making dinner, and he can't find it, so he uses his "creativity" to buy chicken noodle soup and cream instead, then I have to go back to the store and get the right thing. Dinner is late, and if we can't return the chicken noodle soup and cream, money is wasted. Gas money is wasted either way. And I'd probably get upset, feeling like my husband didn't really listen to me or he didn't feel I was worth the time to get the right thing, ask a store employee where the right thing is, etc.
7-11 has cameras everywhere. It is much safer to set something to be delivered at a random person's address when you know they (and maybe their neighbors) will be at work, or at an unoccupied or abandoned house.
Walmart has less cameras and more traffic, so it's easier to blend in or be lost in the shuffle, but they are often right next to police stations, which makes criminals more nervous than just using a different address...
At every Walmart I've been to, at the front is the cash registers, followed by fresh food and women's clothing (I'm not going to order those online from Walmart, as I'd want to look at them first). When I order stuff from Walmart, it's usually electronics, which is in the back anyway, right next to the online pickup.
It reduces time for me; Even though I have to wait for someone to come to the back and hand me the item(s), that is less time than it would take for me to go through multiple isles and find the item(s), then stand in a checkout line or go through the self checkout (and often they have the self checkouts set to not scan electronics). I've never experienced a line at Walmart's online pickup. And usually, I check the availability of what I want before heading to the store anyway, so it's no extra time to just buy it then, and if the store only has a couple I don't have any worry about it selling out before I get there.
My husband use to work 9 - 5. They changed it for some reason and now he works 8 - 4. When I worked an office job, it was 9 - 5, with a 30 minute lunch and 2 15-minute breaks spaced throughout the day.
Maybe heat is cheaper than AC for you, but it isn't for me. But that's most likely because my kids and I can actually stand to be without AC most of the summer, but I can't stand to be without heat in the winter - most of the summer I actually keep the AC off most of the day, and either have the doors & windows open or go outside, shutting them and turning on the AC a bit before my husband comes home, because he gets heat stroke very easily; in the winter, I stay inside more, and have the heat on all day long.
The only things that add a significant amount of heat to the house are the oven and dryer. In the summer, I hang the clothes outside rather than using the dryer, and use the grill, slowcooker etc. more in order to use the oven less. In the winter, these things don't heat enough of my house to allow me to turn the heat down. At most, I can remove a layer of clothing when the oven is on.
There's also the added expense of running a humidifier in the winter; heaters make the air very dry. If you're running the heat more you have to run the humidifier more.
I only know one person that lived over 90, but she was happy. She didn't realize she'd lost people... she thought their younger relatives were them. Then, she forgot they even existed.
If we figure out how to live to 120, I don't see why we couldn't figure out how to have strong bones at 85. In fact, I think we already know how to do that, there are many healthy, active 85 year olds. It's just that it takes exercise and eating in a way you may not want to, for your whole life.
To access Project Gutenberg or modern day free resources (free books are still copyrighted, by the way), one needs a job to pay for the internet and electricity (books that tell you how to make your own solar panels or etc. are within copyright). You're not going to be able to make money in the modern world (well, not in a first world country) by reading purely out-of-copyright stuff. Even factory work requires a diploma (and even a degree, at some), which even for homeschoolers requires reading at least some copyrighted material. And only being able to discuss out-of-copyright art is going to make it difficult to get a job on a personality level.
And without a job, what can't they do, other than access Project Gutenberg? They can't buy food, and the growing tips in out-of-copyright books are expecting soil much different than what is currently in our yard. They can't pay for heat nor air conditioning... last summer was literally fatal for people without air conditioning, and they wouldn't have survived the past month without heat; out-of-copyright books don't provide information on making your own air conditioning and heat that would work with our modern day home, and anyway many of our tools are electric, so if they can't pay for power nor new tools they're screwed. They can't use my cellphone to call for help - I'm pretty sure Project Gutenberg doesn't have Android For Dummies, and they can't charge it nor pay for more minutes anyway. They can't buy new batteries for the fire alarm so that they can tell if their makeshift heat source has set the house on fire while they sleep. Etc. etc. etc.
But that's just surviving - how can't they function in the world? If we think about it honestly, they would barely be able to have a conversation with, well, anyone. Think about the last conversation you had that revolved purely around out-of-copyright material. Any conversation like that deeper than "how are you today" from a cashier, I'll bet are rare if not nonexistant. And unless you met in a Project Gutenburg book club, I'll bet most of your friendships began by discussing copyrighted stuff. So there wouldn't even be the hope that they'd find a partner willing to pay for them to live.
One could argue that much of entertainment is art, and art is food for the brain, without which it will wither and die.
I say it would be impossible for me to educate my children without what some would consider entertainment. Books, at the very least, would be necessary for my children to become educated enough to function in the world, and those are copyrighted. They could survive without this education as long as I'm alive; but once I die, if I haven't read books to them, shared knowledge I learned from books, or left them books, they would literally die.
And personally, as a pirate, my logic is "I'm entitled to see exactly what I am spending my money on before I spend it." Videos of games, trailers of movies, summaries of books, etc. do not show me what I would be getting for my money; they show me an advertisement, which is tidbits of the game/movie/book dressed up in an attempt to entice me to buy them. Steam is doing things right in offering free weekends for games, Amazon is doing things right in offering the first percentage of books for free, Netflix and Crunchyroll are doing things right in offering me a plethora of movies/shows where I'm able to stop watching in the middle and move on to something else with no money lost. So when I try something good from Steam or Amazon, I pay for it, and I pay for Netflix and Crunchyroll monthly. My pirating has dropped drastically since those services came to their current maturity, and is now reserved only for companies that continue to subscribe to the "sell it to them unreturnably before they realize it sucks" mentality.
Admittedly, I do also pirate things which I know are good, but which are no longer available legally. If those things ever become available legally again, I purchase them.
I don't read it, but I do take out and use all the coupons, before throwing the white pages into the compost pile and the yellow pages into the recycling bin. So the companies putting coupons in there make money from me without me reading it, and the company that puts out the book makes money from the companies putting coupons in there.
bothering to pirate stuff from the RIAA anymore? I mean, anyone actually old enough to have a job (and therefore, money)? I don't know anyone that does; the stuff the RIAA poops out is crap, and there's other legal sources for better music now...
So... technological needs are judged by the appearance of the outside of the building? Guess my plan of letting the outside of my house look like I'm too poor to have anything, so that no potential burglars realize there's a bunch of expensive technology-related stuff inside (or of spending all my money on computers and video games rather than fixing the outside of my house... however you want to look at it) should work!
I think where the whole concept went sour was right about at "original idea". There is no such thing as an original idea - all ideas have been influenced by the ideas of others, even when it is subconscious; and everything has been thought of before, just not necessarily patented.
Knowledge does not have to be patented to be profitable/used for personal gain. For example, I have the knowledge of how to do several crafts. I sell the products of that knowledge on Etsy. Anyone else in the world can acquire this same knowledge for free, as I did. But, people are lazy, or they'd rather spend their time doing other things; so instead of learning to make things themselves and doing so, they buy it from me.
If someone releases a knitting pattern with the "new idea" to combine two different stitches, I can buy that pattern, sell the finished object, and then we both profit. I will likely use part of my profit to buy another pattern from the designer. Sure, I could make up patterns myself, but I don't want to; I'd rather spend my time doing other things.
The money is not in the secret, nor in the preventing other people from profiting from your knowledge; it's in the fact that not everyone wants to spend their time doing what you want to do, and/or don't want to take the time and effort to learn the knowledge, and/or the time and effort to apply your knowledge - yet still want the same result.
In fact, I have found, that when applying of knowledge is blocked (from others using it), it instead ceases to be profitable.If someone could patent a knitting pattern, and make me unable to make items from it, or to sell the items, then I don't have any money to buy more patterns, or I just give up buying patterns because why buy a pattern if I can't make things from it anyway? And neither of us profit.
Because of the fact that you are the only one that knows how to work the DVD player in your house, you ALWAYS have to work the DVD player for everyone; that quickly becomes annoying and tiresome, and you'll get to the point where you don't want to do it anymore, and if you held the pattent on working the DVD player, no one watches DVDs. Since you don't hold the patent on working the dvd player, someone else COULD apply this knowledge (once they bothered to learn), and then you'd both profit; they'd get to watch a DVD, you'd get to be left alone and not bothered to work the DVD player.
Which is only helpful if you have a cat, and just ends up with the plastic bag in the landfill still. Paper bags, while unlikely to be reused, do have uses outside of the landfill; plastic bags (which I think are just as likely or unlikely to be reused) as I said have little reuse outside of the landfill.
And while neither will decompose at a landfill, a paper bag will decompose if just thrown to the wind (as so many people strangely like to do with bags) while plastic bags will not.
Perhaps if we had paper bag recycling boxes in stores as we do plastic, people could return their paper bags, and they could be donated to be used in schools and etc.?
Uh, I replied to a comment that said to "go outside and have fun in the real world". I'm not saying there is nothing else than video games. I'm saying there is nothing I can find for adults to do outside in the real world (because that was a key piece of the post I replied to), that don't end up with the adult spending more time inside trying to set up, talking about etc. on the internet than time spent outside, and giving more and more money to companies that screw them over.
I have yet to find ANY activity for adults that doesn't require giving more and more hard-earned money to companies or groups that screw you at every opportunity. Bikes, running shoes, etc. keep getting more cheaply made, fall apart faster, wear out easier so that the companies make the max profit and you end up buying more every couple of years (months even, with shoes). The government allows people to build on more and more land, leaving small nature preserves that are screwed over because of all the buildings around them. Etc.
Slashdot Mirror
But the iPad was replaced by the iPad 2. It's one thing when a company stops support on an older product/service and replaces it with a new product/service that does everything and more, giving you the opportunity to upgrade and continue doing the same things with the same friends... but it's completely different when they just stop a product/service you still want to use without giving a similar alternative.
Sega stopped because they didn't have the money to continue, which is completely different.
As I said, if the company doesn't release a patch, someone else will. This has been done for years, there is no reason to think it will stop now.
Those games are gone.
Wait... where did they go? Did some mass fire destroy all remaining copies in the world? No. They're still there. I can still have my kids, born after they came out, play those games. I can - and do - have my kids play games from 30 years ago, from when I started gaming. Even the games that actually were lost to me due to fire or whatever ravages of time. Games do not suddenly cease to exist a few years after they are released. The good games are still played 15 years later, 30 years later, and I'm assuming 60 years later, 100 years later. Like classic books, the good ones will survive, they won't go anywhere. The games that only have nostalgia going for them will be lost once the people with that nostalgia stop lamenting or die out.
By the time the servers of today's games are shut off, someone will have hacked/cracked them and made them playable without those servers. Games needing activation or some kind of server has been around for years now, many games have had their servers shut off. But I can't think of a single game that I still want to play, but that I absolutely can not play.
1. IMO if you are bored, you are already past the point of creativity, are subconsciously refusing to be creative due to depression, or are being prevented from doing what you want to do. Boredom is unpleasant, and we naturally avoid unpleasantness when we can, rather than waiting for it to happen and fixing things afterwards. For example, if a jar of pickles slips off the counter, and we see it is headed for our toe, we will instinctively try to move out of the way so that our toe does not get hit, rather than just letting our toe get hit because it is easy to bandage up a broken toe. It has been shown, however, that depressed people are less likely to move out of the way. So I think that if possible we will avoid boredom, and lack of avoiding it shows either an inability to avoid it (we tried to jump out of the way, but the jar still hit our toe) or that something is wrong (we did not instinctually try to avoid the jar, showing that there is some problem).
... today they are busy with mobile devices. And in fact, today we (in first world countries) are mostly doing work that leaves us with time and energy to do something with that creativity. And we can put them on the internet for all the world to see. Even a brief look around the internet will show that, despite all the mobile devices, we still have plenty of creativity.
2. I do not agree at all that creativity comes from boredom. Boredom is a relatively new thing. Not too long ago, we didn't have time to be bored; we'd be working on the farm all day, or at the factory all day, or keeping the household running (think about how much time/energy it took to do things that are mundane now, such as doing a load of laundry, before modern conveniences). Even in the times when people had servants to do the grunt work, they still had a packed day. Back then, having time where you had nothing to do yet had enough energy to do anything but sleep was a luxury, it was cherished. Yet, people were still creative. This can be seen in not only museums, but in vintage quilting, needle arts, furniture, etc. Sure there were a few people that now have their stuff seen as creative art, that did it for a living, and so were doing it instead of working on a farm or at a factory, but the majority of stuff that was kept as art was carefully kept in good/usable condition because it was art from the beginning.
Though people were busy with something the majority of the time, they still got inspired and took time out to do something with that inspiration (or kept it in their head if they could never manage to make time). In the past they were busy with work or etc.
One thing of note though is that many modern-day parents force their kids into being bored. They are holding their foot in place as the pickle jar plummets toward it. 2 generations ago, maybe even 1 for some of us, kids played outside, without adults. They did not have schedules full of organized activities. If they felt that boredom was about to sink in, they would do something. If they told their parents they were bored, their parents either sent them outside or gave them an extra chore. But now parents are afraid of letting their kids outside without an adult; and many adults do not have the time and/or the desire to take their kids outside. When they do take their kid outside, it is in an organized and/or supervised activity. Or, kids have a packed schedule of school, after school care, homework, and organized activities, leaving them no time to go outside and just play. Kids desire down time, they desire unorganized, unsupervised play time, though they often don't realize it, because this is crucial to development. When kids aren't allowed or don't have time to get that time, of course they will seek it out in places they ARE allowed to go; on mobile devices, on game consoles, on the internet; because parents feel that is safe because the kid is near them or at least inside, because those don't take extra time (i.e. they can be done while the parent drives or grocery shops)
I totally disagree. That's just efficentness. If I tell my husband to stop and pick up cream of chicken soup on his way home so that I can finish making dinner, and he can't find it, so he uses his "creativity" to buy chicken noodle soup and cream instead, then I have to go back to the store and get the right thing. Dinner is late, and if we can't return the chicken noodle soup and cream, money is wasted. Gas money is wasted either way. And I'd probably get upset, feeling like my husband didn't really listen to me or he didn't feel I was worth the time to get the right thing, ask a store employee where the right thing is, etc.
7-11 has cameras everywhere. It is much safer to set something to be delivered at a random person's address when you know they (and maybe their neighbors) will be at work, or at an unoccupied or abandoned house.
Walmart has less cameras and more traffic, so it's easier to blend in or be lost in the shuffle, but they are often right next to police stations, which makes criminals more nervous than just using a different address...
At every Walmart I've been to, at the front is the cash registers, followed by fresh food and women's clothing (I'm not going to order those online from Walmart, as I'd want to look at them first). When I order stuff from Walmart, it's usually electronics, which is in the back anyway, right next to the online pickup.
It reduces time for me; Even though I have to wait for someone to come to the back and hand me the item(s), that is less time than it would take for me to go through multiple isles and find the item(s), then stand in a checkout line or go through the self checkout (and often they have the self checkouts set to not scan electronics). I've never experienced a line at Walmart's online pickup. And usually, I check the availability of what I want before heading to the store anyway, so it's no extra time to just buy it then, and if the store only has a couple I don't have any worry about it selling out before I get there.
Why the hell do I want to drive across town to a Walmart to pickup my stuff
Because you're already going to walmart to grocery shop anyway.
My husband use to work 9 - 5. They changed it for some reason and now he works 8 - 4. When I worked an office job, it was 9 - 5, with a 30 minute lunch and 2 15-minute breaks spaced throughout the day.
We're in a suburb of Chicago.
Maybe heat is cheaper than AC for you, but it isn't for me. But that's most likely because my kids and I can actually stand to be without AC most of the summer, but I can't stand to be without heat in the winter - most of the summer I actually keep the AC off most of the day, and either have the doors & windows open or go outside, shutting them and turning on the AC a bit before my husband comes home, because he gets heat stroke very easily; in the winter, I stay inside more, and have the heat on all day long.
The only things that add a significant amount of heat to the house are the oven and dryer. In the summer, I hang the clothes outside rather than using the dryer, and use the grill, slowcooker etc. more in order to use the oven less. In the winter, these things don't heat enough of my house to allow me to turn the heat down. At most, I can remove a layer of clothing when the oven is on.
There's also the added expense of running a humidifier in the winter; heaters make the air very dry. If you're running the heat more you have to run the humidifier more.
Do you have a point in copy/pasting that multiple times?
In the winter if people are home when the sun is lower they will use more heat...
Our bodies still haven't caught up to the fact that we don't need daylight anymore.
Must be good for preventing it too, as I have never had it towards pirating.
I only know one person that lived over 90, but she was happy. She didn't realize she'd lost people... she thought their younger relatives were them. Then, she forgot they even existed.
If we figure out how to live to 120, I don't see why we couldn't figure out how to have strong bones at 85. In fact, I think we already know how to do that, there are many healthy, active 85 year olds. It's just that it takes exercise and eating in a way you may not want to, for your whole life.
To access Project Gutenberg or modern day free resources (free books are still copyrighted, by the way), one needs a job to pay for the internet and electricity (books that tell you how to make your own solar panels or etc. are within copyright). You're not going to be able to make money in the modern world (well, not in a first world country) by reading purely out-of-copyright stuff. Even factory work requires a diploma (and even a degree, at some), which even for homeschoolers requires reading at least some copyrighted material. And only being able to discuss out-of-copyright art is going to make it difficult to get a job on a personality level.
And without a job, what can't they do, other than access Project Gutenberg? They can't buy food, and the growing tips in out-of-copyright books are expecting soil much different than what is currently in our yard. They can't pay for heat nor air conditioning... last summer was literally fatal for people without air conditioning, and they wouldn't have survived the past month without heat; out-of-copyright books don't provide information on making your own air conditioning and heat that would work with our modern day home, and anyway many of our tools are electric, so if they can't pay for power nor new tools they're screwed. They can't use my cellphone to call for help - I'm pretty sure Project Gutenberg doesn't have Android For Dummies, and they can't charge it nor pay for more minutes anyway. They can't buy new batteries for the fire alarm so that they can tell if their makeshift heat source has set the house on fire while they sleep. Etc. etc. etc.
But that's just surviving - how can't they function in the world? If we think about it honestly, they would barely be able to have a conversation with, well, anyone. Think about the last conversation you had that revolved purely around out-of-copyright material. Any conversation like that deeper than "how are you today" from a cashier, I'll bet are rare if not nonexistant. And unless you met in a Project Gutenburg book club, I'll bet most of your friendships began by discussing copyrighted stuff. So there wouldn't even be the hope that they'd find a partner willing to pay for them to live.
One could argue that much of entertainment is art, and art is food for the brain, without which it will wither and die.
I say it would be impossible for me to educate my children without what some would consider entertainment. Books, at the very least, would be necessary for my children to become educated enough to function in the world, and those are copyrighted. They could survive without this education as long as I'm alive; but once I die, if I haven't read books to them, shared knowledge I learned from books, or left them books, they would literally die.
And personally, as a pirate, my logic is "I'm entitled to see exactly what I am spending my money on before I spend it." Videos of games, trailers of movies, summaries of books, etc. do not show me what I would be getting for my money; they show me an advertisement, which is tidbits of the game/movie/book dressed up in an attempt to entice me to buy them. Steam is doing things right in offering free weekends for games, Amazon is doing things right in offering the first percentage of books for free, Netflix and Crunchyroll are doing things right in offering me a plethora of movies/shows where I'm able to stop watching in the middle and move on to something else with no money lost. So when I try something good from Steam or Amazon, I pay for it, and I pay for Netflix and Crunchyroll monthly. My pirating has dropped drastically since those services came to their current maturity, and is now reserved only for companies that continue to subscribe to the "sell it to them unreturnably before they realize it sucks" mentality.
Admittedly, I do also pirate things which I know are good, but which are no longer available legally. If those things ever become available legally again, I purchase them.
The RIAA is the RECORDING Industry Association of America - music, not video.
I don't read it, but I do take out and use all the coupons, before throwing the white pages into the compost pile and the yellow pages into the recycling bin. So the companies putting coupons in there make money from me without me reading it, and the company that puts out the book makes money from the companies putting coupons in there.
You mean like Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, and Amazon Video On Demand, sent to your Roku or other internet streaming set top box?
bothering to pirate stuff from the RIAA anymore? I mean, anyone actually old enough to have a job (and therefore, money)? I don't know anyone that does; the stuff the RIAA poops out is crap, and there's other legal sources for better music now...
So... technological needs are judged by the appearance of the outside of the building? Guess my plan of letting the outside of my house look like I'm too poor to have anything, so that no potential burglars realize there's a bunch of expensive technology-related stuff inside (or of spending all my money on computers and video games rather than fixing the outside of my house... however you want to look at it) should work!
I think where the whole concept went sour was right about at "original idea". There is no such thing as an original idea - all ideas have been influenced by the ideas of others, even when it is subconscious; and everything has been thought of before, just not necessarily patented.
Knowledge does not have to be patented to be profitable/used for personal gain. For example, I have the knowledge of how to do several crafts. I sell the products of that knowledge on Etsy. Anyone else in the world can acquire this same knowledge for free, as I did. But, people are lazy, or they'd rather spend their time doing other things; so instead of learning to make things themselves and doing so, they buy it from me.
If someone releases a knitting pattern with the "new idea" to combine two different stitches, I can buy that pattern, sell the finished object, and then we both profit. I will likely use part of my profit to buy another pattern from the designer. Sure, I could make up patterns myself, but I don't want to; I'd rather spend my time doing other things.
The money is not in the secret, nor in the preventing other people from profiting from your knowledge; it's in the fact that not everyone wants to spend their time doing what you want to do, and/or don't want to take the time and effort to learn the knowledge, and/or the time and effort to apply your knowledge - yet still want the same result.
In fact, I have found, that when applying of knowledge is blocked (from others using it), it instead ceases to be profitable.If someone could patent a knitting pattern, and make me unable to make items from it, or to sell the items, then I don't have any money to buy more patterns, or I just give up buying patterns because why buy a pattern if I can't make things from it anyway? And neither of us profit.
Because of the fact that you are the only one that knows how to work the DVD player in your house, you ALWAYS have to work the DVD player for everyone; that quickly becomes annoying and tiresome, and you'll get to the point where you don't want to do it anymore, and if you held the pattent on working the DVD player, no one watches DVDs. Since you don't hold the patent on working the dvd player, someone else COULD apply this knowledge (once they bothered to learn), and then you'd both profit; they'd get to watch a DVD, you'd get to be left alone and not bothered to work the DVD player.
Which is only helpful if you have a cat, and just ends up with the plastic bag in the landfill still. Paper bags, while unlikely to be reused, do have uses outside of the landfill; plastic bags (which I think are just as likely or unlikely to be reused) as I said have little reuse outside of the landfill.
And while neither will decompose at a landfill, a paper bag will decompose if just thrown to the wind (as so many people strangely like to do with bags) while plastic bags will not.
Perhaps if we had paper bag recycling boxes in stores as we do plastic, people could return their paper bags, and they could be donated to be used in schools and etc.?
Uh, I replied to a comment that said to "go outside and have fun in the real world". I'm not saying there is nothing else than video games. I'm saying there is nothing I can find for adults to do outside in the real world (because that was a key piece of the post I replied to), that don't end up with the adult spending more time inside trying to set up, talking about etc. on the internet than time spent outside, and giving more and more money to companies that screw them over.
I have yet to find ANY activity for adults that doesn't require giving more and more hard-earned money to companies or groups that screw you at every opportunity. Bikes, running shoes, etc. keep getting more cheaply made, fall apart faster, wear out easier so that the companies make the max profit and you end up buying more every couple of years (months even, with shoes). The government allows people to build on more and more land, leaving small nature preserves that are screwed over because of all the buildings around them. Etc.